AO3 Language Change

AO3 Language Change

1. Old English

   • Beginnings of Literature
     • Beowulf
   • Latin Alphabet
   • Angles' Saxons, Jutes
   • Etymology

2. Middle English

   • 1066 Norman Invasion
     • French Influence
   • Beginnings of the Great Vowel Shift 1350-1700

3. Early Modern English

   • William Caxton Printing Press.
     • 1476
     • Standardisation
   • Shakespeare
   • Move towards Standardisation and stablisation of punctuation.

4. 18th and 19th Century

   • Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
     • 1755
     • Standardisation
   • Removal of the Long 'S'
     • 1785-1810
   • Lowth Grammar
     • 1762
     • Published 'A Short Introduction to English Grammar'
   • Search for Prescriptive 'Pure Form'
   • Latin Ideal

5. English Today

   • Borrowing worldwide
     • Globalisation
       • Cultural Infusion
       • Pigeons
         • Born into two languages
       • Creoles
         • Native and new language merge together to form another
   • Drift towards colloquial use
     • Sociolinguistics
       • Education
       • Conflict
       • Class Systems
       • Politics and Power
       • Social Trends and Fashion
   • Technology

6. English Tomorrow

   • Pesemistic Approach
     • Overlapping, incomprehensible dialect
   • Optimistic Approach
     • Diversity benefits
     • World English

7. English as a Global Language

   • 300-400 million native speakers
   • Language of Business
   • 1.5 Billion speakers worldwide

8. Approaches

   • Descriptive
     • Modern
     • Comments on change
     • Language develops gradually and inevitibally
   • Prescriptive
     • Language is decaying
       • Crumbling castle, damp spoon etc.
     • Judges language change